1986: Miami Film Festival--growing Up

February 2, 1986|By Candice Russell, Film Writer

The Miami Film Festival may only be in its third year but there are signs that this annual event has grown up. This year`s lineup is smaller, more selective and, if the quality of the films shown to critics thus far holds true for the others, superior.

Brazil, the most controversial film of the moment, has been snared by festival organizers as the opening movie on Feb. 7 at Gusman Cultural Center. This mind-boggling fantasy of a future world, with Jonathan Pryce and Robert De Niro, is the ripest plum on the festival tree.

The bounty continues through Feb. 16 with such titles as Poulet Au Vinaigre, the new film from French master of suspense Claude Chabrol; Tangos, an exhilaratingly original film with dance about Argentine exiles living in Paris; Sugarbaby, a wonderfully implausible West German romance between a grossly fat middle-aged woman and a much younger, thin, married man; the intellectual Dreamchild about what really happened to the little girl who inspired Lewis Carroll`s Alice in Wonderland ; and Trouble in Mind, a romantic melodrama with Kris Kristofferson, Lori Singer and Genevieve Bujold, directed by Alan Rudolph, the American original who made Choose Me and Welcome to L.A.

Of course, it`s too soon to tell what film will surprise everyone and become the festival`s sleeper hit. Two years ago it was the enormous response to The Gods Must Be Crazy from Botswana that helped launch the film in the United States.

Already two titles are the hottest sellers: Staircase C, about artistic people in their 30s who live in the same building, directed by Charles Tacchella (Cousin, Cousine ); and Three Men and a Basket, about a trio of bachelors living with a newborn baby, France`s official entry for this year`s Academy Award as Best Foreign Film.

It`s admirable that the festival doesn`t merely pick up films from festivals in New York, Chicago and Toronto. The organizers find their own, with the hope that they can bring attention to movies that deserve it, rather than films that already have found it elsewhere. ``Brazil needs all the help it can get,`` says festival director Nat Chediak. ``If the Los Angeles Film Critics had not named it Best Film of 1985, Universal Pictures would never have released it.``

The moviegoer stands to benefit in other ways as well. It will be possible to see all or most of the films. Last year it was not, due to scheduling, the scramble to drive from one location to another, and the fact that many screenings were sold out. There are fewer films -- 30 (from a dozen countries) as opposed to 38 last year, 32 in 1984. But they are in bigger theaters. Only the Gusman Cultural Center in downtown Miami and the Coconut Grove Playhouse will be used.

``This time everyone can see everything,`` says the perennially optimistic Chediak. ``The worst thing that can happen is that someone will overdose on movies.``

An exciting part of the festival, and unlike anything found at the New York Film Festival, is the seminars and special film-related events. This year`s Cinema in Literature Symposium on Saturday, Feb. 15 at 10 a.m. will feature an impressive trio of authors, the three luminaries of the Latin American literary boom: Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Manuel Puig (who wrote Kiss of the Spider Woman) and Mario Vargas Llosa. It will be held at the Miami Knight Center, 400 NE Second Ave., Miami. Best of all, it`s free to everyone.

Yet irony hangs over this year`s festival, from every indication a more wisely structured event than in 1985 and 1984. Now that the festival is established, internationally known, and so well-attended that crowds at some screenings were turned away, the city of Miami withdrew its financial support. That means the festival is facing a deficit of $50,000 -- the amount of the grant given by the city last year.

``That really hurt us,`` says Thomas R. Spencer Jr., chairman of the film festival. ``I`m working my tail off to make it up through more corporate donations and higher single-ticket sales. I think we`re going to make it. The phones have been ringing off the hook at BASS ticket outlets.``

Baird Thompson, who along with Bob Holtzman is a public relations consultant to the festival, reports that in four days single-ticket gross sales amount to $26,000, which represents more early box-office interest than last year. ``We`ll make it through, but it will be real tight,`` he says, adding that more than 100 people are flying in on Eastern Airlines tour packages to attend the festival. ``The festival won`t make a profit. But because we have 47,000 seats -- double the seats we had last year -- we need to sell 60 percent of those to break even. Otherwise we`ll have some pretty serious financial problems.``